Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #184 BITESIZE | How to Build Closer Connections with Your Children | Philippa Perry

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Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Bite size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 75 of the podcast with the psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry. In this clip, she explains how we can improve the relationships that we have with our children and why even when we get things wrong, learning how to repair our mistakes is key to building closer connections. in part one of your book i i've highlighted this paragraph a child needs warmth and acceptance physical touch your physical presence love plus boundaries understanding play with people of all

Starting point is 00:02:00 ages soothing experiences and a lot of your attention and your time. If only it were that simple, right? Well, it sounds simple, doesn't it? And I always think that when we're pregnant or expecting a child, you think you'll be able to do that. And you sort of think about it and that's what you want to do. And yet, there you are with a baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager, and you feel this irritation coming up that gets in the way of you making that connection. Or you feel split in lots of different directions at once or life gets in the way.

Starting point is 00:02:38 But what gets in the way really is we get in the way of ourselves. More than external things like work and busyness and being pulled in directions at once, we get in the way of ourselves because whatever age your child is at is liable to remind you on a sort of bodily level what you went through at that age. And if you don't want to be reminded, your child be like a trigger. You love your child, but then you're also experiencing them like a trigger. So you'll push them away and you won't consciously know this is what you're doing. For example, if your child is crying because they can't do up their shoelaces, and perhaps you might remember this or you might not, but perhaps your parents told you off for not being more manually dexterous than you were, and you hated that feeling of feeling vulnerable, incompetent, clumsy, and not good enough. when your child is displaying the same things you don't want to be reminded of that vulnerability so you kind of push them away rather than going you take your time with that shoelace you're

Starting point is 00:03:52 going to get the hang of it i know you are you're more like oh let me do it because you just want to push away that feeling that that's coming up in you yeah i mean it's happening for me i'm sure for many people listening to our conversation i'm sure they'll be sort of tensing up and thinking about certain situations that have happened and often we think we're turning into our parents as we get older but i often wonder if we just we just almost a mirror of the behavior we have been exposed to and then we just absorb that and then we apply it onto our kids. I think... And we can't help it. We can't help it.

Starting point is 00:04:29 We can't help it. And we will do that. And I snapped. Nobody gets this right. Nobody gets this perfect. I might have felt, you know, oh, leave me alone at times with my kid when I feel completely overwhelmed by them. And what you can do is something I call in the book rupture and repair, which is when you notice you've misunderstood or misattuned your kid or shouted at them when it wasn't their fault. And then you can say to them when you've realized, I shouldn't have done that. It was my fault. It's not you, it's me. realized I shouldn't have done that it was my fault it's not you it's me you can repair the rupture and then they'll go oh it's all right because they're really more resilient than we might think but it's important to repair the rupture yeah I think that's a really great point

Starting point is 00:05:16 that's something I certainly think I have improved in my own parenting over the last two or three years is if I have been really stressed and I have snapped yeah um I've learned that actually you know it's okay to say hey you know what daddy's really sorry you know I was juggling two or three things I was quite stressed out on my work and I shouted at you and I took it out on you yeah I'm sorry and yeah and and for me it was quite hard for me to do that at first but it makes me think um how important is it to tell the truth to your children? I think if you want a good, close connection with your kid, and who doesn't really? Why have them otherwise? Authenticity is key. Obviously, you don't want to use your child as a therapist.

Starting point is 00:06:03 Obviously, you don't want to use your child as a therapist. Yeah. Okay. But somebody once asked me, but isn't it important that our kids think we're always right? Otherwise, they won't feel secure. I said, no, it's important that they think we're always authentic so we can have a connection. Because if we say something is blue and they can see it's green, we are going to be interfering with their instincts. So if we say to a kid, it was your fault when actually it was our fault, we are interfering with their instincts. And if we interfere with their instincts,

Starting point is 00:06:37 we will dull their intelligence. And obviously we don't want to do that. So it's really important for parents to be authentic. obviously we don't want to do that. So it's really important for parents to be authentic. Is, on some level, is not the best parenting tip of all to sort yourself out first? Well, that's the first chapter in my book, is to look at your patterns, look at why we do what we do, examine something I call the critical voice, because that tends to merge with our parenting a little bit too much. So the first chapter, the first part of my book is all about sort yourself out. How can someone do that? Someone's listening to that and they go, okay, wrong one. Okay, Philippa, I get it. But they don't know where to start or they're in this kind of, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:22 the treadmill of modern life. They're busy. They're just trying to get home, feed the kids, get them to bed, get to bed, do their emails, get back. They think, well, where do I start? You start with charged emotion. So we can all get in the practice being a little bit more noticing our moods, noticing when a mood feels particularly charged. So if we have a charged emotion reaction to our child, because this is a parenting book, but it can be to anything, maybe we feel particularly self-righteous or something. I'm just fairly charged up. What I ask people to do is to stop. What I ask people to do is to stop. Don't just assume that charged emotion has got something to do with the scenario that's right in front of you right now. Stop. Look at the pattern of that charged emotion. Trace it back. Where does it come from? When did you first feel it? I mean, my particular charged emotion is when somebody accused me of lying

Starting point is 00:08:27 when I hadn't lied. I just go mental. And I can remember once as a family, we were watching University Challenge and I said the answer and nobody heard me. Then I said, I said that. And they went, no, you didn't. I just flashed. I just sort of, I just noticed it. I was like, yes, I did. And then I said, oh, sorry, overreacted a bit there. And then tracing that back, I realized my parents never believed me. Whatever I said, they never believed me. So I sort of like didn't know whether I was true or not. You know, I didn't know whether my experience was really my experience or whether I was kidding myself the whole time. So it was a very powerful thing and that would trigger me. So that's the sort of thing you can do is notice

Starting point is 00:09:15 when you feel particularly self-righteous or just really irritated. What's that charge about? or just really irritated? What's that charge about? Why are you so irritated because your kids put a sock on inside out? Why does that really matter? Trace that back. Trace that back to your childhood. So notice a charged emotion is a really good way of beginning to see how your past is affecting your present you need time for this stuff and what i mean by that is i i'm a big proponent with all of my patients and anyone i try and help with their health say you need a bit of downtime every day you can't just go go go all day you can't just literally be on tech and emails and work and spend all evening on it consuming consuming consuming consuming you need downtime because it's in that downtime that you reflect you know without that downtime

Starting point is 00:10:10 how are you going to reflect on a charged emotion if you're just jumping from one thing to another and i think now we've got this phone thing to fill in blank moments of time like we've got the bus journey we're not just going to sit out look out the window and think because that's a bit under stimulating no we'll get the phone out and look at instagram don't get the phone out just sit there and see what comes up for you 100% and i think this is the the thing i'm i'm sort of banging on all the time about at the moment in talks or in the podcast is downtime is important we've eroded downtime out of society and has an impact even just for this reflection even just five ten minutes we'd have we'd have

Starting point is 00:10:51 a lot more time if we played with our phones less and children need that downtime too children need actually i would say boredom is quite good for kids because out of boredom comes creativity yeah like i don't know what to do oh i think you'll think of something can i have my phone no yeah and um why can't i have my phone because i don't want to give it to you i've got this thing about boredom being good for people i'm sorry you don't like it you know we can be very sympathetic with the boundary but the boundary still has to be there yeah it's it's and then And then out of the boredom, would you like some paper? See what you can do with that.

Starting point is 00:11:31 I mean, what kids are really good at teaching us is to be in the present. And what we tend to be is like with one foot in the future thinking, I've got to do those emails. I've got to go through the edits on my book. I need to do that before midnight. And then we're not with them because we're away in the present. So what we can do, we're not going to stop planning for the future, otherwise it's going to be chaotic, but we can still be in the present with them more. I think what parents need is to be seen, understood, helped, loved, and contained.

Starting point is 00:12:04 Sounds like what children need. Because that's what they have to give to what children need because that's what they have to give to their kids so that's what i wanted the book to do i wanted it to encourage to forgive not that there's anything to forgive but be sort of like look what we do to our kids and yet they still grow up despite it it's sort sort of like, yeah, I just wanted to give to parents what I want them to give to their kids, which is being got, being understood. And what's the easiest way of doing this? There's always hope. There's always hope. And no relationship ever ran smooth. And that goes for the one with you and your kid, because you might have made a mistake and misunderstood what their needs were. Who doesn't do that? We've all done it. But just

Starting point is 00:12:52 because you don't walk somewhere in a straight line doesn't mean to say you don't get to the end. We're always going down one direction thinking this isn't working, changing direction, doing another direction. Obviously, I cock up as much as most parents cock up but i think the thing is is to go my bad when we do and it and it makes all the difference are you a bad parent, we get overly defensive about the bad behavior that we've done. That's one reason. Another reason is being a parent is being in a relationship with a child. You don't often say I'm good or I'm bad in our other relationships. We are what we are, sometimes attuned, sometimes misattuned, sometimes getting it, sometimes not getting it, sometimes self-obsessed,

Starting point is 00:14:07 sometimes open. We're not good and bad. We're human. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Please do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the full conversation with my guest. And if you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my new bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're

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Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #184 BITESIZE | How to Build Closer Connections with Your Children | Philippa Perry

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